Stuart Varney Loses It Over TrackingPoint’s Precision-Guided Rifles

Is it just me, or does it seem like every gun control advocate secretly longs for a return to single shot black powder muskets – if guns are to be available at all? Add a splash of technology to the mix where firearms are concerned and they lose their ever-lovin’ minds, complete with copious hand-wringing over the potential that any citizen (with a spare $20-$30,000) might be capable of feats previously possible only by expert marksmen. The part I’m loving the most? There isn’t a single damned thing they can do about it.

Varney is like that other idiot. Just because I can buy this product, doesn’t mean I will. If I want to make a 1/2 mile shot, I need to buy a rifle capable of that. My .243 won’t make it. So now do I want to get a .338 Lapua? NO! I can hit what I want with what I have, with my Leopold scope. Excuse me while I go make a 1000 yd. shot with my j-frame mod 60. in .38 spec. LOL.

You’re right, Dirk. To say Varney “loses is” is ridiculous. He’s generally quite conservative. In this case, however, he does seem to be arguing against it, although he might have just been trying to make the guest back up his arguments. In the end, he did compliment the device.

I disagree with the guest on one point, however. If I want to buy one of these, it’s none of the government’s business and I shouldn’t have to pass their test.

I suppose I could sell my house, which after the mortgage melt-down,
is worth $13,000 less than I paid for it 20 years ago, and live in my car,
just to have a rifle that can shoot moving targets? Ya, right! Wadda ya
wanna bet ol’ Stuart V. could easily afford one of these on his salary,
and still have a house to live in?

That’s my biggest problem with Fox…I am generally a fan of their take on fiscal & monetary policy and economics, but I also know that Murdoch is no true friend to gun rights and most of the network personalities are just neocons who don’t care about civil liberties. I like Cavuto and the Judge, but the rest I don’t care for.

I don’t watch Varney’s Fox Business show but I catch him on O’Reilly and some of the other Fox News shows. He’s a pretty staunch fiscal conservative because he fled the UK because, well, it’s the UK, but he’s also a guy from the UK who now lives in New York, I doubt he’s much of a gun guy. I don’t think he’s exactly anti-2nd amendment (at least in his own mind), but the technology does raise an eyebrow.

The reality is if you have $30,000 you have enough to buy a .338 Lapua and a few thousand rounds to practice with. Lincoln, Garfield and McKinley were all shot with handguns at close range so we learned to provide the president with security. Kennedy was shot with a rifle and we learned to make the presidential limo bulletproof. This is the next step. It’s no longer good enough to secure a 500 yard radius. And armies are no longer limited to 3 volleys a minute. The British were appalled that we would and could target their officers from 300 away with our rifles.

So what’s the answer? The way I see it, the good guys will always outnumber the bad guys. The only difference is the bad guys will never voluntarily disarm themselves under threat of prosecution. In England a whole neighborhood watched as a couple of radical militant Muslims butchered an off duty soldier because they aren’t even allowed to possess a can of pepper spray. They were impotent to stop them so they sat and watched it happen, recorded video with their cell phones and waited the 20 minutes for the police to arrive. At 30 feet I’d take just about any handgun over a .338 Lapua, you just have to hope there’s someone 30 feet away to stop the bad guy.

For God’s sake. Varney did NOT lose it. C’mon people, he’s a citizen now and a very intelligent individual. He asked the questions in a forthright manner and Jason was equally forthright in his answers. I enjoyed the interview and I think that Varney did an excellent job.

Not one of these systems has been sold in the civilian market, not one. When January 2014 comes around these will be so limited and restricted most won’t even know a friend of a friend of a friend who owns one.
As to the video I thought it was a great conversation.

I just had a thought… A little off-topic but it does relate to the march of technology…

One of the main themes of the gun-control crowd is “Civilians shouldn’t have access to military-grade weapons.” Another one is, of course, “The Founding Fathers couldn’t have envisioned assault rifles with detachable magazines and the thing that flips up – clearly they couldn’t have meant a right to THAT!”

Thing is … back in the day, pretty much everyone who had a rifle, soldier or civilian, had a military-grade weapon. The civilian vs military rifles might have had different furniture, but pretty much everything was a muzzle-loader shooting ball ammo with black powder.

So, yeah, the Founding Fathers might not have envisioned machine guns (and, personally, I wouldn’t lay money on that – Ben Franklin, for one, was a pretty bright guy) and the Internet. But they sure could envision free speech as a right regardless of the medium used to express it – and they certainly knew the second amendment was affirming the right of every citizen to military-grade arms.

You forgot that a raghead shot Robert Kennedy with a .22 as he was passing through the kitchen. Oh was I being a racist just then, well lets see, um how about camel FUGGER? No thats worse, um Sand Ni_ _er? No? Gee I guess I just can’t be PC! But then I am the only racist that reads this sight. The rest off you are just so damn perfect.

Until the TrackingPoint is a tested, proven, and available at retail, it is VAPOR WARE!

Having participated in telescopic matches at 500 yards (at which bullet flight-time has to be factored in timed target exposures), I can honestly say it is damned hard to hit a target at that range. A good rifle, with a good trigger and optics, does make it easier but there is still a lot of the human element involved.

In this guy’s imagination there are tens of thousands of psychopaths who’ve only been restrained from becoming homicidal maniacs by their inability to hit a golf ball sized target at 1000 yards, and now that the only thing standing between said legions of psychopaths and said shot is a mere $20,000-$30,000, a background check and a few hours of training, we’re probably going to see the streets flowing with the blood of the innocents…except we’re not, because homicidal maniacs already have all the weapons they want. That guy has no ability to reason.

News flash @$$hole, we are a country of snipers. Without thinking answer the following question: What is the most popular form of hunting? Most responses are, deer hunting, more specifically it is hunting with a scoped rifle. I think we all know that one guy, non-military, good ole boy, who reaches out with his Remington 700 30-06, 3-400 yards all day long.

I am so tired of people thinking this system is “laser guided”. Until they build smart ammo that can guide itself it is just a fancy, overpriced range finder. Sure you might be able to hit a golf ball at 1000 yards, but then again a small bit of wind 500 yards out and you will miss. This scope can not guide a bullet to the target. I realize the makers have to make it sound like this is the greatest thing ever to make someone pay 30,000 dollars for it, but lets get realistic. There are so many variables this scope cant figure in, air temp, humidity, downrange wind, barrel temp, how the ammo is loaded, etc. Guess what, you still need to be a good shooter to hit at 1000 yards. If people would stop acting like this is the holy grail it wouldnt be a problem.

I am baffled how people make the leap from a $30,000 rifle to assassinations. If I had $30,000 and wanted to kill someone from a half mile away, I would pay a thug $1,000 to do point blank with his hi-point, while I was a half mile away at a fine restaurant spending some of the money I saved on lobster and fillet while toasting to my success with Cristal.

If I went on a hunting trip with a friend and he showed up with this on top of his rifle I would be crying from laughter. Basically what this says is you can’t shoot and you need a $20,000 piece of tech to compensate for your inexperience. On the plus side you could take Stephen Hawking on a hunting trip and unleash motorized hell on the deer population.